SIR Keir Starmer is facing fresh fury over Britain’s migration crisis as the Tories and Reform warn his overhaul of the asylum system will not stop the boats.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper unveiled plans to rip up the current appeals process in a bid to speed up deportations and clear the growing backlog of asylum seekers stuck in taxpayer-funded hotels.
PAThere have already been more than 50,000 small boat crossings since Labour came to power[/caption]
GettyPrime Minister Sir Keir Starmer[/caption]
Under the shake-up, the independent immigration tribunal will be replaced by a new panel of “professionally trained adjudicators” tasked with fast-tracking challenges to Home Office decisions.
Ministers say the move will slash the current backlog of 51,000 asylum appeals, which take an average of 53 weeks to resolve.
But the move has been slammed by both the Conservatives and Reform UK, who say it is little more than window-dressing.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp argued the proposals “go nowhere near far enough” as “the underlying rights, which allows most illegal immigrants to stay here, are not changing”.
He added: “Simply waving illegal immigrants through even faster to full housing and welfare rights will not fix the problem.”
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice added: “The Government’s proposed changes are just tinkering at the edges and will do nothing to solve the hotel crisis.
“What they should be doing is to follow Reform’s plan: leave the ECHR, abolish the Human Rights Act, immediately detain and deport anyone who is here illegally.”
The backlash came as a new poll revealed seven in ten voters think Sir Keir is handling the asylum hotel crisis badly.
A YouGov poll for The Times found 71 per cent of the public disapprove of the way the Prime Minister is dealing with the issue – including 56 per cent of Labour voters.
The same survey found 37 per cent of voters now believe immigration and asylum is the single most important issue facing the country — more than the economy (25 per cent) and health (7 per cent) combined.
And in a fresh blow to Labour, Reform UK was named by 31 per cent of voters as the party best placed to handle immigration and asylum – compared with just 9 per cent for Labour and 6 per cent for the Conservatives.
The findings will heap pressure on Sir Keir to take tougher action — especially after a High Court judge last week ordered the Home Office to remove up to 138 male asylum seekers from a hotel in Epping, Essex.
Even Labour grandees are now warning the Government risks losing control of the narrative.
Former Home Secretary Lord Blunkett told The Times: “I think that the individual measures the government has taken are extremely helpful in their own right but don’t add up either to a comprehensive answer or an understandable narrative.
“At the moment the issue is so toxic and beginning to get out of the government’s grip to the point it is very hard to bring it back. A further package of actions is absolutely vital to start controlling both the public narrative and the delivery.
“If this slips out of our hands, it’s incredibly difficult to pull it back. Once people have got it in their heads that the government haven’t a grip and that this is an intractable problem, they will turn on you. That is meat and drink. It’s the old cry, ‘For god’s sake, do something’.”
Lord Blunkett urged ministers to consider temporarily suspending the ECHR and the UN Refugee Convention, and to bring in a digital national identity card scheme to help clamp down on illegal working and the black economy.
He said: “It’s not unprecedented. It’s a blunderbuss measure but sometimes things have moved so rapidly you need to indicate decisive action.”
Cabinet ministers are also privately worried the current review of Article 8 of the ECHR, which protects the right to family life, is dragging on.
One unnamed minister told the paper: “We don’t have solutions that match the scale of the problem. We have to do something on Article 8.”
Ms Cooper ordered the review back in March but it is not expected to report back until late autumn.
Meanwhile, tempers flared over the weekend as protests erupted outside migrant hotels in cities including Manchester, Birmingham, Norwich, Stevenage and London.
Crowds gathered for a third straight day, with chants and banners expressing anger at the Government’s handling of asylum accommodation.
But turnout was lower than expected, with some groups outnumbered by police and counter-demonstrators.
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